The AI Agent Playbook for Builders
There has been a shift in AI agent development strategy from "Agent as a Framework" to "Agent as a Business," with successful agent launches now seeing a maximum market cap of ~$10M compared to ~$100M+ a few months ago. The new playbook emphasizes three simultaneous products builders must manage: a core product solving real problems with product-market fit and revenue, a token serving as an alignment tool rather than a necessity, and the conversational agent itself as a complementary product enhancing the core offering. Case studies of successful implementations include Kaito's enterprise crypto search engine approach and Cookie's freemium model.